Guns Of Icarus Online
Community => Community Events => Topic started by: redria on July 14, 2014, 03:53:39 pm
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I am going to go ahead and kick this thread off. The idea here is that this is only Season 1 of Hephaestus. While season 2 might not happen immediately, I would like to see it picked up and continued for several more seasons, evolving to match the needs and desires of the community and the audience. Whether this includes me or any of the current admins is outside the scope of this thread. This thread is to get a head start on evolving the Hephaestus Challenge so it can come back with Season 2, bigger and badder than ever.
So what I want from you guys is an analysis of how things have gone for you so far. Be as critical as you need to be. What are things that went wrong? Problems you ran into? Highlights? Things you might suggest?
The Season isn't over, and a Champion is yet to be crowned, and the Hell that is the Silver Playoffs looms just around the corner. But it is never too soon to look towards the future and start crafting a masterpiece.
I will update this post as we go with topics of discussion.
A few starting points might be...
- Is the HC League too long, too short, or just right? Why do you feel this way?
- Much of the league uses a best of 1 system. Would a best of 3 system have felt better, or was the best of 1 option a good way to protect your time and the audience's time?
- The HC League (re?)introduced a separation of casting and administration, but failed (largely due to me) to separate administration and referees. Was the separation good? Would you have liked to see more separation between administration and referees?
- Time limit rules came into play multiple times. Were these rules a good way to end the match, both as a player and as a viewer? Is there a different format that you feel might better protect the ability to bring any style to competition?
- Were the set start times a good or bad thing? Did you feel you were left waiting in full lobbies too long waiting for your match to start? Did you enjoy knowing exactly when your match would start? Did it allow you to schedule better and get friends to watch you? Would a rolling start time or a different format work better?
- Did the lobby time limit provide an adequate arena for selecting your ship without opening the match to excessive ship swapping? Did you feel safe to take unusual builds, or would a different system make you feel safer in taking unusual builds?
- Were the pause time rules fair, and fairly enforced? Were you ever concerned that server problems or player disconnects would ruin a match for your team?
- Were the substitution rules sufficiently flexible to allow you to make all needed substitutions? Did you ever feel the substitution rules were too lax, allowing a player or team to abuse them?
- Were there any rules you felt strongly for or against? Something you felt harmed the integrity of the match or League?
- Do you feel that the map pool provided sufficient variety, and that the maps each added something beneficial to the map pool? Was there a map that detracted from the quality of the League that you felt should have been removed?
- Would you be intrigued by a restructuring of the regular season to allow more fluid participation, or would you prefer a second season to maintain a more strict adherence to current structuring?
- Would you be interested in playing more than one match per day (Bo1) even if your matches were not scheduled consecutively?
- Would you be interested in taking an axe to the pause rules and removing official pauses?
I open this thread up to everyone. If you have any feedback to give about the structure and administration of the Hephaestus Challenge, we would love to hear it. If you would like to bring up something you feel would be best not approached in public, feel free to message me or another of the admins about it. Thank you to everyone.
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And, as I said, it is open to everyone.
1. It is too long. But in both a good and bad way. The length feels right. It makes each match important and lets us have a real sense of moving through the season. However it also limits the League to only those who signed up at the very start. This is extremely limiting, and it puts a lot of strain on the teams that do sign up. I have some ideas on this that can be discussed later. Suffice to say, the current format is wonderful, but feels very long.
2. I am loving the best of 1. No contest in my eyes.
3. Separation of powers should be maximized. I dropped the ball in recruiting referees, and it left us admins responsible. While I have nothing but praise for my fellows for picking up the slack, it shouldn't be their responsibility. In the future it needs to be handled better, and I think a corps of referees would be greatly beneficial.
4. I'm sort of ambivalent about the time limits. They are serving their purpose. If you want to play a fast match, go ahead. If you want to play a sniping attrition battle, go for it. All styles are welcome here. The time limit is there to protect the audience's time. Some games are going to be less interesting. I see no problem with that. I like the happy medium we found.
5. I love the set start times. I think it has been working wonderfully all around.
6. I think the lobby timer should be discussed. While I personally didn't see any problems, the opportunity is there and there must be a solution that protects teams that wish to take unusual builds from hard countering in the lobby.
7. I think the pause time rules did their job, but were a little bit complex. Possibly needs more work based on feedback.
8. I liked the substitution rules. There was some pretty good movement of subs between teams when needed, and I saw no problems arise from it.
9. No rules I had any problems with so far.
10. The map pool (opens can of worms) also has felt pretty good to me. Removing any of the maps would remove a significant element of the game. Even if some maps are conducive to certain styles of play, they still add to the quality of the league.
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As for time limit, I would say a penalty for a 0-0 match would be acceptable just to keep it interesting for spectators. I think if people want to time out on a 1-1 that would at least mean two ships die during the match.
As for the map pool I have a ridiculous idea that you should probably ignore. Cross division matches played on 4v4 maps. Perhaps have the 2 teams from each division play on different sides of the map so that nobody is trying to throw a game to affect their division in some way.
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As for time limit, I would say a penalty for a 0-0 match would be acceptable just to keep it interesting for spectators. I think if people want to time out on a 1-1 that would at least mean two ships die during the match.
I agree. I think counting a 0-0 as a loss for both sides would probably provide a good incentive for the teams to actually start fighting.
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A 4v4 cross would be kind of neat, and save some time with having 4 teams competing at once instead of two.
1- I feel it's pretty lengthy in general, but I don't really see a problem with that. Getting 7 matches going in a 3 hour period or so is quite good. Adding another caster and division would allow for more matches to occur at the same time, but would be harder to schedule and such. Overall I think it's fine as is, but as more teams sign up, there might need to be a change.
2- I'm a huge fan of best of one.
3- I didn't see too many issues, but I'm on the participant end of the spectrum. One thing we could use is a more formalized referee structuring. It seemed that each ref had their own style for letting teams know when to ready, and sometimes they didn't tell them to ready.
4- I think the time limits are fine. They're doing what they're supposed to, and you can't really prevent matches from timing out.
5- Set times are beautiful
6- This might need some work, but I can't think of a good solution. There was some changes in the last couple minutes, and teams felt a lot of pressure not to change at the last second.
7- Pause got a little weird on occasion, but it worked out alright
8- I had an issue with the sub system. *
9- Rules seem fine
10- I feel all the maps are fine. I know a lot of players (including myself) aren't the biggest fan of Dunes, but it always comes down to how a team chooses to play.
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For the sub system, I feel it needs to be a little more strict. I don't expect for teams to have the same exact crew throughout the entire event, but some of the subbing was a little extreme. One example was during the period of By Weeks, one team had half of their entire team subbed with half of another team that had that week off. Should there be a limit on how many subs you can have on your team? Should teams have a roster of subs? Such only allowing up to 2 wildcard subs, but having the rest be listed (and whoever is listed as a sub can only sub for that team) or something similar. Should there be a more strict limit on when players can be subs? (ie: if you you play for a team on one week, you can't play for another team for 2 weeks).
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Oh, another set of comments. I liked the random map rotation, and think dunes is actually a very interesting map, despite people's preference for sniper builds. If you look at game 1 for the black cloaks from sunday rumble 10, both teams bought mobulas and pyras with liberal field gun usage, but we managed to build a half sniper half brawl mobula which you wouldn't necessarily see on other maps.
As for lobby timer, I think it solves the problem in a way that certainly is adequate, but still a bit rough around the edges. I still want to see a draft where a team gets to draft ships in a 1-2-1 pattern and then pick gun loud-outs in a 1-2-1 pattern.
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I am highly not in favor of drafts.
If someone wants to make a tournament based around that then sure, go for it, but not in HC.
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Yeah that's totally reasonable. It's not really that sort of competition. I should run a few practice drafts with someone and see how it turns out.
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sacrilege has a lot to say about this tournament but don't want comment until its over
main things that i would like to see changed time the tournament has ran for/ lack of matches played.
pause rules, dunes map rules, only one match not seen as competitive.
i'm not a fan of spending all week organizing my clan and then a dc in to lobby doesn't lead to more time.
will post our ideas and rules that we think need changing after the tournament in order to not take away from the teams that are doing well
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will post our ideas and rules that we think need changing after the tournament in order to not take away from the teams that are doing well
That is completely fair. As I said, if you want you can feel free to send me a message with some of your thoughts privately. I want to have some of this in discussion so the rules are ready for change quickly after the end of the season to minimize down-time. Anything sent to me in private will be shared only between admins for discussion.
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Is the HC League too long, too short, or just right? Why do you feel this way?
I feel ok with how long HC league is when it comes to it being a few months long tournament. Many matches require alot of training and preparation, which I feel that, during such a long time, can only affect teams positively, giving them more time to progress. When it comes to the amount of matches per day, I'm fine with the length of the tournament, I'm just not ok with the time all matches end, and because of that I'd prefer the matches to start an hour earlier than they do.
Much of the league uses a best of 1 system. Would a best of 3 system have felt better, or was the best of 1 option a good way to protect your time and the audience's time?
In the current stage of the tournament I'm ok with the best of 1 system, but I sure do hope that when the golden playoffs will start, we'll switch to the best of 3/5 system. At that point one match between two teams may not be enough to truly represent the skillgap between two different teams, so if there's a chance a team may end up in the finals because of one lucky match, I feel it would be weird (f.e if Muse vs Clamour were to happen in the Golden Playoffs).
The HC League (re?)introduced a separation of casting and administration, but failed (largely due to me) to separate administration and referees. Was the separation good? Would you have liked to see more separation between administration and referees?
I had no issues around that subject, so I personally am fine with how it is now.
Time limit rules came into play multiple times. Were these rules a good way to end the match, both as a player and as a viewer? Is there a different format that you feel might better protect the ability to bring any style to competition?
Neither as a player or viewer, I don't feel satisfied seeing matches ending with a timeout. I don't feel like 30 minutes of no-kill match is a good thing, neither is waiting for a whole match to the very end, getting few kills for an advantage and winning by a technicality that is a timeout win. I believe that a system similar to SCS games (15 min base +3 min per kill of time) would be more efficient, and we'd avoid prolonged, passive snipe fights as well. I'd also add additional rule like in footbal, where a referee can add bonus time (up to 3(?) minutes)if the match were to end during the engagement.
Were the set start times a good or bad thing? Did you feel you were left waiting in full lobbies too long waiting for your match to start? Did you enjoy knowing exactly when your match would start? Did it allow you to schedule better and get friends to watch you? Would a rolling start time or a different format work better?
I'm ok with the matches starting right after the previous matches are over (again, similar to SCS rules), but I don't mind the current system as well, even though I think it has some flaws. First of all, we've seen many stomp matches ending after 10 minutes, that gives us 20 additional minutes to already existing 15 minutes of break, a timespan I feel is unnecessary, as it may gather up to 105 minutes of wasted time in total between 4 matches that could simply be filled with immediate start of the next match. I don't think that people not showing up for their matches would be an issue, most of the people are watching other Hephaestus matches before waiting for theirs anyway,and I don't know if that was ever a problem in the SCS, having this system, but it would surely save time for many people. One benefit is that it allows you to show up on a certain (even if unnecessary late) hour, and there's still enough time for teams to schedule a pre-hephaestus warm up.
My biggest issue is the very start of the event being so late for Europeans, causing alot of roster problems during the last matches of the day. I'd either implement non-strict match times, so the Saturday's events would end earlier than they currently end, or I would start the event an hour earlier itself, same as SCS(or both, both is good as well).
Did the lobby time limit provide an adequate arena for selecting your ship without opening the match to excessive ship swapping? Did you feel safe to take unusual builds, or would a different system make you feel safer in taking unusual builds?
If I feel that a build is unusual, then I probably didn't play enough with it to feel comfortable using it in official competitive tournament, so I don't take it in the first place. Getting the preferrable loadout wasn't really much of an issue, me and my team usually are confident enough with what we take, but even in the cases of having an issue with choosing our layouts I still don't feel like we're overwhelmingly pressured with the time limit. Time limit-wise I don't expect anything to change my layouts into more unusual, though, and I don't see the connection between the time for choosing a build and its quirkiness.
Were the pause time rules fair, and fairly enforced? Were you ever concerned that server problems or player disconnects would ruin a match for your team?
As much as during first 2 weeks of the Hephaestus I felt like pause rules are very strict and merciless (I really like having a pause, even in combat, if I'm being teleported around the ship, anywhere BUT the hull that needs repairing), I find them fair in most cases, and even if cruel, the reasoning behind it is completely understandable. Also, I am always concerned about server problems and DCs ruining not only my team's match, but also our opponent's, and other teams overall, though I'm not sure I would change the rules in case of the in-combat DC with a soft pause that we currently have in the game, many people probably won't look at the chat during combat anyway, so shooting will happen in places. As it stands, I wouldn't change the rules.
Were the substitution rules sufficiently flexible to allow you to make all needed substitutions? Did you ever feel the substitution rules were too lax, allowing a player or team to abuse them?
If I'm correct, the substitute player needs to switch his/her layout to the one that the player being replaced had. Thus, I don't even see a way to abuse it, and I consider the substitute rules to be fair. Regarding not being able to use a player that already played for another team that particular day, I feel like there's more than enough willing subs around that teams know, active and ready to help the team, so I don't think there's any reason for one player to sub in multiple matches on one day. I feel comfortable with the rules as they are, I don't feel the need to change anything about them.
Were there any rules you felt strongly for or against? Something you felt harmed the integrity of the match or League?
Other than having one match happening for us at an hour I was not comfortable with, I have no other issues with the Hephaestus League at all. Neither I can think of anything I was especially positively surprised about, I just absorbed the rules as ones I'm comfortable with, not having any issues. I'm neutral about most of it. Only thing I'd want is to reschedule one of our matches, but I think that we're at fault, asking for it so late.
Do you feel that the map pool provided sufficient variety, and that the maps each added something beneficial to the map pool? Was there a map that detracted from the quality of the League that you felt should have been removed?
Well, Dunes are definitely quite controversial, the map itself asks for lots of sniping builds, which causes alot of long, often boring matches. That being said, it's not happening often enough for me to think about excluding it, with Dunes being a map that alot of teams know how to get advantage of, same as any other map for other teams. I'd personally love to see Labyrinth being included on slightly different rules to the map pool, working with all DM maps, with the map having yet another chance to show off different strengths of the teams.
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Is the HC League too long, too short, or just right? Why do you feel this way?
I second delta here.
Much of the league uses a best of 1 system. Would a best of 3 system have felt better, or was the best of 1 option a good way to protect your time and the audience's time?
I'm fine with either. BO1 is probably the most thrilling format and I think we'd see some more interesting builds with a BO3 system.
The HC League (re?)introduced a separation of casting and administration, but failed (largely due to me) to separate administration and referees. Was the separation good? Would you have liked to see more separation between administration and referees?
The referee work and casting have been very good so far. No complaints whatsoever. Personally I do not see why one wants to seperate administration from refereeing to begin with.
Time limit rules came into play multiple times. Were these rules a good way to end the match, both as a player and as a viewer? Is there a different format that you feel might better protect the ability to bring any style to competition?
I liked the timer. 30min are sufficient to finish the vast majority of matches and if prolonged sniper matches are "cut off" I don't consider that a bad thing. On the contrary the system is capeable of distrubiting attacker/defender roles in static matches as the winning team can play the timer. Even in case of the 0-0 match we've had I think letting the match result in a draw was a good thing. If neither team shows any ambition to win, let neither win. In the Tournament Phase we need to generate knockouts somehow though.
Were the set start times a good or bad thing? Did you feel you were left waiting in full lobbies too long waiting for your match to start? Did you enjoy knowing exactly when your match would start? Did it allow you to schedule better and get friends to watch you? Would a rolling start time or a different format work better?
I really liked the set times. It allowed us to schedule our saturday evening precisely. The BO1 match + usually a scrim prior to that, without much dead time for us clans. That's good.
I'd like to see the whole thing starting an hour earlier.
Did the lobby time limit provide an adequate arena for selecting your ship without opening the match to excessive ship swapping? Did you feel safe to take unusual builds, or would a different system make you feel safer in taking unusual builds?
I've got mixed feelings about it. Last minute switches which might require an adjustment like swapping players around ships may not be handled ideally by the system. Then again we (SIR) personally didn't encounter any severe problems with the time-limit so far.
Were the pause time rules fair, and fairly enforced? Were you ever concerned that server problems or player disconnects would ruin a match for your team?
I do believe dcs need less regulation. A gentleman-code as "If the enemy requests you to pause outside of an egagement, just pause!" should do the work just fine.
Afaik the rather strict regulation we've got caused more harm than it prevent. E.g. it can ruin sneaky engagements through cloudcover by having the engaging team wait until the cloudcover is removed. I know that this happened at least once and one team accused the other team of abusing the pause rule to gain an unfair advantage after the match.
Were the substitution rules sufficiently flexible to allow you to make all needed substitutions? Did you ever feel the substitution rules were too lax, allowing a player or team to abuse them?
the subtitution rules were good and should be kept as is.
Were there any rules you felt strongly for or against? Something you felt harmed the integrity of the match or League?
I dislike the overregulation of pauses.
Do you feel that the map pool provided sufficient variety, and that the maps each added something beneficial to the map pool? Was there a map that detracted from the quality of the League that you felt should have been removed?
I'd like to play Labyrinth competitively.
I wouldn't shed a tear if dunes was cut. After having participated in many different tournaments for about a year now, I've yet to play a single, really enjoyable, competitive dunes match.
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1. I'm liking the length, the longevity of the season makes it really feel like a league I am competing in as opposed to a weekly meet-up, should definitely not be longer though, a little shorter might be nice but I wouldn't care either way.
2. Best of 1 really feels odd from a player perspective, especially against teams with an aggressive play style.. sort of "show up, play for 5-10 minutes, go" maybe if more streamers were to get involved having more games played at once would unlock a best of 2 or best of 3 option, which would be nice, but in the current situation BO3 would take far too long.
3.I had no problem with casting or administration and would like to give a huge +1 to everyone involved /salute
4. The time limit never left me feeling pressured and kept every game as entertaining as the last, as with the last point +1
5. The only time the forced start really affected us was when the division-wide meeting in TAW almost overlapped the game against BFS, we literally rushed the meeting, joined the lobby, had 30 seconds to adjust builds to the enemy and then went, otherwise I really enjoyed the way we knew when the game would start and we could wrap up our warm-up games before playing and have a discussion for a good 10 minutes pre-game!
6. I would like to see a sort of dota style draft implemented, for the sake of testing, for next season just to see how it goes. I wasn't victim of any ship swapping but I have seen in other tournaments while standing in for teams it can become as issue, my experience here was with SAC Vs Thralls in a SCS where both teams were countering eachother forever and eventually Tropo raged and readied up! haha!
7. Once again, never really affected us and the system worked well and was enforced efficiently and quickly!
8. One of the best rules I've ever seen for subs, been able to pull in some great last minute guys because of them, an improvement might be "you are not allowed to stand-in against a team you have flown for previously this season", thus the pool of subs will be even bigger and cheating is still unlikely to happen but this is up for discussion.
8. Nope
9. Too much Canyons, too little Dunes :( But more seriously having the maps chosen would be really nice! you can still keep them hidden but it would be nice to know that you won't be subject to 3 weeks on Canyons.. and not a single game of my precious Dunes :(
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1. The length of each evening is good, but I do have some small issues with the length of the season. Locking in time every saturday for 7 weeks at least, and more if your team advances to the playoffs with only 1 bye is bearable, but definitely don't make it any longer. Apart from a convenience point of view, there is also the issue that newer teams, or teams that didn't consider playing competitively a month ago are essentially locked out of the ranked competitive system, yes there's the SCS but that's an entirely different type of tournament. Also, an earlier start time would be much better
2. I feel bo1 was fine, and was definitely the best way to manage to get most teams playing each round whilst keeping each evening relatively short. Saving bo3/5 for the finals, when there are less teams was the right choice.
3. I didn't notice any difference from the usual excellent quality of umpiring due to the lack of separation, so I'm not bothered by this
4. Whilst it's never entirely satisfactory to see a match end with a time limit, few people will argue in some cases it was necessary :/ The 30 min time limit was good in my view, it gives teams opportunities to play a reasonable game, and enough time to work up opportunities, whilst preventing some more passive matches from dragging on ad infinitum.
5. The set start times wasn't so much of an issue for me, I've never known a clan to miss a match, and most clans are there at least half an hour before anyway to warm up, but the certainty of the start times made it easier to organise skrims beforehand.
6. I always tend to lean conservatively, and towards ships we know and have rehearsed for competitive matches, so the lobby timer wasn't so much of an issue for me. I've not personally experienced too much of an issue before, with clans swapping ships to hard counter the other team multiple times whilst waiting, so I'm not sure how much of an issue that is, but I feel the current system works, since swapping ships and corresponding crew loadouts takes time
7. The pause rules were fair, and fairly enforced. Apart from a few awkward situations with ships being force spawned, or being blown by winds into buildings, none of which are really preventable, the rules worked perfectly.
8. The substitution rules are fair, and I haven't seen any team or players abusing them. However, for future tournaments it might be an idea to limit the number of non-clan substitutes, perhaps to three. Whilst this may cause problems for Muse :p, it helps to assure people that another clan isn't unfairly influencing a match
9. No, I am happy with all of the rules, and of the running of the tournament as a whole
10. I feel all of the maps have their place within the pool, and to remove one or two would hurt the variety of the league. Perhaps what could be considered is a ban on passive playstyles/lack of engagement adding a cp match into the mix, to provide some more variety in builds and playstyles
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As for time limit, I would say a penalty for a 0-0 match would be acceptable just to keep it interesting for spectators. I think if people want to time out on a 1-1 that would at least mean two ships die during the match.
I agree. I think counting a 0-0 as a loss for both sides would probably provide a good incentive for the teams to actually start fighting.
Not only would this be pointless, given that both teams taking a loss or both teams taking a tie would have the same effect on their ranking either way, it would also be fundamentally altering competitive play on extremely weak grounding. It is based on the flawed assumption that a result that has happened exactly once in over a year and a half of GOIO competitive play will not only happen again but become a problem. Both teams in the 0-0 game wanted to win but it was simply taking too long for either team to get a good position on the other. If we had to play eachother again, we'd probably realize taking the same builds on the same map would likely result in a stalemate situation and we would either take something else or come up with another strategy beforehand.
There are plenty of ways to improve competitive play, but needlessly browbeating teams who are giving their time and energy to participate in this marathon league is not one of them.
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Is the HC League too long, too short, or just right? Why do you feel this way?
The length of the league wasn't bad imho
Much of the league uses a best of 1 system. Would a best of 3 system have felt better, or was the best of 1 option a good way to protect your time and the audience's time?
This is dependent on what the organizers want... If they want to incorporate this league into MLG, then per the rules currently stated on their site, we will have to go to Bo3 or Bo5... if not, Bo1 was perfectly fine
The HC League (re?)introduced a separation of casting and administration, but failed (largely due to me) to separate administration and referees. Was the separation good? Would you have liked to see more separation between administration and referees?
Separation was good. Casters didn't have to worry about rules, and could put more effort into casting the match
Time limit rules came into play multiple times. Were these rules a good way to end the match, both as a player and as a viewer? Is there a different format that you feel might better protect the ability to bring any style to competition?
The timer served its purpose... I do not however like the fact that it could be used to get a kill and then run away until time ran out.... though I do not have a way to counteract this currently
Were the set start times a good or bad thing? Did you feel you were left waiting in full lobbies too long waiting for your match to start? Did you enjoy knowing exactly when your match would start? Did it allow you to schedule better and get friends to watch you? Would a rolling start time or a different format work better?
Love the set start times... let me schedule my day better
Did the lobby time limit provide an adequate arena for selecting your ship without opening the match to excessive ship swapping? Did you feel safe to take unusual builds, or would a different system make you feel safer in taking unusual builds?
This is something that irked me previously, but I'm at the point where excessive ship swapping is just silly.... switching ships at 1 second to match start is underhanded and cheap though
Were the pause time rules fair, and fairly enforced? Were you ever concerned that server problems or player disconnects would ruin a match for your team?
Of the matches that I watched, I didn't get the feeling that pause rules were enforced at all... or it was more along the lines that nobody really bothered to remember the pause rules
Were the substitution rules sufficiently flexible to allow you to make all needed substitutions? Did you ever feel the substitution rules were too lax, allowing a player or team to abuse them?
nope
Were there any rules you felt strongly for or against? Something you felt harmed the integrity of the match or League?
nope
Do you feel that the map pool provided sufficient variety, and that the maps each added something beneficial to the map pool? Was there a map that detracted from the quality of the League that you felt should have been removed?
nope
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The only problem I experienced was this only:
Were the set start times a good or bad thing? Did you feel you were left waiting in full lobbies too long waiting for your match to start? Did you enjoy knowing exactly when your match would start? Did it allow you to schedule better and get friends to watch you? Would a rolling start time or a different format work better?
I'm ok with the matches starting right after the previous matches are over (again, similar to SCS rules), but I don't mind the current system as well, even though I think it has some flaws. First of all, we've seen many stomp matches ending after 10 minutes, that gives us 20 additional minutes to already existing 15 minutes of break, a timespan I feel is unnecessary, as it may gather up to 105 minutes of wasted time in total between 4 matches that could simply be filled with immediate start of the next match. I don't think that people not showing up for their matches would be an issue, most of the people are watching other Hephaestus matches before waiting for theirs anyway,and I don't know if that was ever a problem in the SCS, having this system, but it would surely save time for many people. One benefit is that it allows you to show up on a certain (even if unnecessary late) hour, and there's still enough time for teams to schedule a pre-hephaestus warm up.
My biggest issue is the very start of the event being so late for Europeans, causing alot of roster problems during the last matches of the day. I'd either implement non-strict match times, so the Saturday's events would end earlier than they currently end, or I would start the event an hour earlier itself, same as SCS(or both, both is good as well).
However good the idea of set start times is, I believe it is for some teams possible to start the match sooner during one of these breaks instead of waiting for the set start time. It would be as easy as asking the leader/-s of both teams wether they are ready to fight sooner or not, or the other way around and if not just start at the set time.
Optional would be asking the teams for their prefered times to set the set the set start times accordingly so every team has their "perfect" team together because everybody in that team could play at the "perfect" time, but that could prove to be too much effort or teams might even call sabotage if they were to fight outside their prefered times against a team that is fighting inside of their prefered times...
I believe some opinions regarding the substitution rules are targeting a specific TAW vs Holy match were one entire ship was played by Rydr. To this I want to say, it was TAW's own decision to fly hand in hand with a team that they have (according to my knowledge) never played with before. Instead of Rydr, TAW could have had an ally with the best crew and pilot in the game, the lack of practise wouldn't and shouldn't have changed the result too much.
The substitution rules were, in my opinion, sufficent and any team has to pay the price when flying with somebody outside the team/clan. However, I would suggest having at least the pilots/captains remain from the same team.
When a tournament lasts this long, then I would like to see some rules covering areas like a clan having internal trouble that affects their team or some time related issues when it's simply too late to play. When such issues are only temporary then the match could be rescheduled to sunday, some friday or any other day during the week or any day during the tournament were the match can be streamed or at least a ref is present and watching these two teams fight it out. I would not see any problem with this either unless some teams want to cheat themselves more practise time against a specific opponent.
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One thing I'd like to say from a streaming standpoint since the game has brought up a few times here, while yes, 0-0 matches are not exactly the most riveting to watch, and can be a pain to cast when not a whole lot happens in 30 minutes, please don't make changes based just on that. We had only one of those matches in a span of two months, and quite frankly if we as casters are not able to carry an audience through 30 minutes of whatever, we're not doing a very good job.
I personally would have no problem with Dunes being pulled from pool play, but that's just my personal feelings on the map, not a cast/stream need.
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1.The HC is too long for the following reasons:
putting away every saturday for this extended period is a lot of work, people go on vacation etc. in the mean time. POssibly have 2 games for every clan every week, or smaller groups?
also the finals should not be 2 weeks at this rate.
2.best of 1 is fine in the group stages.
3. Casters should not be in charge of the organization. they cna play a part, but should not be in control.
4. Yes time limit is good, should be built into the game.
5.start times are fine
6.we had no trouble readying up, teams should have a clear idea of what to bring.
7. the pause rules are too confusing, and could be made simple as to the referee decides when and where.
8. substitution rules are perfect.
9. no, it seems fair all around so far.
10. dont remove maps, lot of players have a tendency to shout nerf or remove, before even trying to find a way for things to work.
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1.Is the HC League too long, too short, or just right? Why do you feel this way?
2.Much of the league uses a best of 1 system. Would a best of 3 system have felt better, or was the best of 1 option a good way to protect your time and the audience's time?
3.The HC League (re?)introduced a separation of casting and administration, but failed (largely due to me) to separate administration and referees. Was the separation good? Would you have liked to see more separation between administration and referees?
4.Time limit rules came into play multiple times. Were these rules a good way to end the match, both as a player and as a viewer? Is there a different format that you feel might better protect the ability to bring any style to competition?
5.Were the set start times a good or bad thing? Did you feel you were left waiting in full lobbies too long waiting for your match to start? Did you enjoy knowing exactly when your match would start? Did it allow you to schedule better and get friends to watch you? Would a rolling start time or a different format work better?
6.Did the lobby time limit provide an adequate arena for selecting your ship without opening the match to excessive ship swapping? Did you feel safe to take unusual builds, or would a different system make you feel safer in taking unusual builds?
7.Were the pause time rules fair, and fairly enforced? Were you ever concerned that server problems or player disconnects would ruin a match for your team?
8.Were the substitution rules sufficiently flexible to allow you to make all needed substitutions? Did you ever feel the substitution rules were too lax, allowing a player or team to abuse them?
9.Were there any rules you felt strongly for or against? Something you felt harmed the integrity of the match or League?
10.Do you feel that the map pool provided sufficient variety, and that the maps each added something beneficial to the map pool? Was there a map that detracted from the quality of the League that you felt should have been removed?
1. I like the length, though I would really enjoy an extra by-week. Maybe between division play and playoffs? Otherwise, it feels solid, and lets teams with a rough start not feel like they have 0 chance of coming back and getting a solid playoff spot.
2. Bo1 works for this. Saving Bo3/5 for playoffs works as well. In a perfect world it would be all Bo3, but the time to do it just isn't worth it to me these days.
3. Everyone so far has been professional in their roles, and I see no need to put extra effort into something that is so far working just fine.
4. I've never been a fan of time limits that feel too short, thus forcing tactics from teams. 30 minutes has seemed to be a good threshold however. I wouldn't want any shorter, nor the Sunday's system of 15min +x for kills. I think the blowback from the one 0-0 match we've had so far in the entire league's life is overblown. It's not a big deal.
5. I love the system we have now. I have a set time to show up, and that lets me set a hard time to make my team show up. I don't have to show up early if I don't want to. I don't have to wait ages for my match because my match's time depends on when others end. A+. To those wanting to start an hour early, I'm against that. I don't know how late it is for you, but for people on the west coast in the US it's early for every Saturday.
6. Not sure how other teams do it, but we tend to decide out loadout long before we are getting into our match lobby on game day. Beyond the annoyance of some teams swapping ships all the time to play "mind games" I've had no issue.
7. I have no issues with the pause rules, though their enforcement could use work. I won't call out any teams, but I do remember a match with a bad pause being called, and I felt it gave the team an advantage. I get why they exist, and they seem fair, as long as everyone is subject to the same enforcement. DC's happen, and if you aren't prepared for them as a team/clan, that's on you. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
8. I haven't had any issues with them, nor do they seem abused.
9. Not so far.
10. No, and I'm always up to say Labyrinth should be a part of the pool, though it doesn't exactly work with the system for ranking partly based on kill/death. (ie, you can die and kill way more than 5 ships in a game of laby.) I really think people hate Dunes just to hate on it. I hate Duel at dawn, but we've played it more then any map so far and I can't complain. Pick a strat, use it.
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A whole lot of good feedback in here so far. Thanks a ton everyone.
Specifically in regards to the TAW-Rydr alliance, we were aware when polishing the rules that such a situation could occur. It was divisive because while none of us particularly liked the idea of a team doing so, we also wanted to ensure teams had every opportunity for flexibility in part due to the length of the event. This was one of several points we agreed to revisit at the end of the season to see how the rules held up. To clarify, it was perfectly legal at the time. Anything we discuss here is purely directed towards season 2.
Along with that, I have a couple of directed questions to add regarding a few points. Note that these are for ideas being formulated by myself, and have not yet been discussed with other admins. So no plans as of yet, just probing the population base.
11. Would you be intrigued by a restructuring of the regular season to allow more fluid participation, or would you prefer a second season to maintain a more strict adherence to current structuring?
12. Would you be interested in playing more than one match per day (Bo1) even if your matches were not scheduled consecutively?
13. Would you be interested in taking an axe to the pause rules and removing official pauses?
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11. I've had many discussion about ways to allow for more fluid participation without unfairly penalising teams, with no real luck or ideas. If however something like that is possible, then I would fully support it. Simply because the imposition of putting time aside nearly every Saturday for upwards of 2 months seems almost excessive
12. Yes, I'd be open to the idea of multiple matches on the same day, as long as there's some flexibility to allow for subs between matches
13. Whilst there have been some issues with the pause rule this tournament, I also feel they're necessary. Part of the joys of playing an online game, and GoIO in particular is the reality of bugs and dc's. Without a pause system, then short of a gentleman's agreement, there's nothing to stop a team being unfairly penalised by forces outside of their control. I think the current pause system as it is written in the rules is the best way to ensure a fair game.
And in regards to the sub rules, I think as I said before, a limit on the number of non-clan member subs, or perhaps limiting the number of subs from a single clan is the best way to do it. Allowing only a certain number of changes between matches is also possible, but when a clan is simply rotating between its members that's not an issue :/ Looking at the feedback and from what I've heard, outside of the TAW/Rydr - HRA match the system worked exactly as intended.
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1.Is the HC League too long, too short, or just right? Why do you feel this way?
I like the length, It feels like each match really matters.
2.Much of the league uses a best of 1 system. Would a best of 3 system have felt better, or was the best of 1 option a good way to protect your time and the audience's time?
I am of the opinion that best of three is better in theory, it prevents flukes and allows the cream to rise to the top, however best of one is much more practical.
3.The HC League (re?)introduced a separation of casting and administration, but failed (largely due to me) to separate administration and referees. Was the separation good? Would you have liked to see more separation between administration and referees?
I have had no issues.
4.Time limit rules came into play multiple times. Were these rules a good way to end the match, both as a player and as a viewer? Is there a different format that you feel might better protect the ability to bring any style to competition?
While time limits are not preferable, they are absolutely necessary.
5.Were the set start times a good or bad thing? Did you feel you were left waiting in full lobbies too long waiting for your match to start? Did you enjoy knowing exactly when your match would start? Did it allow you to schedule better and get friends to watch you? Would a rolling start time or a different format work better?
My clan had organised before the match, so i am not sure that it really affected us that much.
6.Did the lobby time limit provide an adequate arena for selecting your ship without opening the match to excessive ship swapping? Did you feel safe to take unusual builds, or would a different system make you feel safer in taking unusual builds?
Time to swap prevents teams from being completely hard countered, so that should keep the game competitive.
7.Were the pause time rules fair, and fairly enforced? Were you ever concerned that server problems or player disconnects would ruin a match for your team?
The rules were fair enough and clear, however i was in a match where the other team asked to pause, so we did, it seemed to take the referee a little to long to declare a pause in this case.
8.Were the substitution rules sufficiently flexible to allow you to make all needed substitutions? Did you ever feel the substitution rules were too lax, allowing a player or team to abuse them?
I was happy with the rules as they are.
9.Were there any rules you felt strongly for or against? Something you felt harmed the integrity of the match or League?
nope.
10.Do you feel that the map pool provided sufficient variety, and that the maps each added something beneficial to the map pool? Was there a map that detracted from the quality of the League that you felt should have been removed?
I dont think any of the maps should be removed, there might be a case to add other game types, but i am generally happy.
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11. Would you be intrigued by a restructuring of the regular season to allow more fluid participation, or would you prefer a second season to maintain a more strict adherence to current structuring?
12. Would you be interested in playing more than one match per day (Bo1) even if your matches were not scheduled consecutively?
13. Would you be interested in taking an axe to the pause rules and removing official pauses?
11. Beyond additional by-weeks, i'd rather keep it strict. I work for a living, and outside of weekends, I have enough stress going on that I wouldn't want to consider serious matches outside of the weekend. I'm all for new teams showing up, but we have this structure for a reason.
12. No. This goes back to why I much like the current system in terms of matches having set times. If we had more than one, we'd be sitting in limbo until our other matches started. While people might say this takes a lot of time out of their Saturday, that is by choice, because the match only takes ~ 1 hour including setup time for the team itself.
13. I'll be honest when I say at first I thought the pause rules to be a joke. Having seen them used however, I am glad they were there. I'm all for being kind to my fellow players, but they keep things moving in a fair manner.
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11. Would you be intrigued by a restructuring of the regular season to allow more fluid participation, or would you prefer a second season to maintain a more strict adherence to current structuring?
11. Beyond additional by-weeks, i'd rather keep it strict. I work for a living, and outside of weekends, I have enough stress going on that I wouldn't want to consider serious matches outside of the weekend. I'm all for new teams showing up, but we have this structure for a reason.
Dangit. I was doing so well writing my questions clearly. Oh well.
This goes towards restructuring the regular season and divisions set-up for flexibility. I have a really cool idea I want to look more into and bring up soon, but it would pretty much get rid of most of the overall structuring the current rules use. However, the games would still play at set times on Saturday. The question is directed towards whether participants are developing an attachment to the current system or if they are open to alterations. Really this is probably best asked by writing up and releasing my idea, but I want to get feedback from the other admins first and discuss the implications of MLG before we do too much more than look for feedback.
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Ah. In that regard, while I have no issues with hearing ideas, I'm a believer of not fixing what isn't broken.
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For the most part, this league was exactly what I wanted. The basic structure is simple, straightforward and fair. The only issue I had was that there was a point during our match with Overwatch where it wasn't clear whether a pause had been called or not, and I was wasting precious seconds typing to the organizers for a verdict when there was action going on. I'm not sure how to solve this issue, other than refs joining a party/mumble/teamspeak with the teams to vocally inform them of a pause so they won't miss it in the corner of the screen or Muse creating that long-awaited "competitive mode" where the game auto-pauses for dcs and such.
I think, all in all, 11 weeks is a bit too long. It is very difficult to know with complete certainty whether a team member will be able to show up every saturday for nearly three months, especially if you also want them to be there for most scrims/practices so the team can practice together and stay in good form. When core members get stolen away by unexpected real life problems/obligations it really makes things a lot more stressful for those organizing everything. Somewhere between 5 to 8 weeks is the sweet spot for GOIO leagues, I think. Long enough to give things a sense of grandeur and provide for a good variety of match-ups, but not so long teams are getting too stretched thin or fatigued towards the end. If this means that teams might have to play more than one match some weeks, I think that would still be preferable. Can't speak for everyone, but I'd rather have my core team together for multiple matches in a night and focus on winning than have to worry about where they are going to be in two month's time.
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From a non-leader's/organizer's standpoint, this has been a well run and officiated league. My only suggestion is that more bye-weeks be added. If that involves extending out to 12 weeks and only having 4 matches a week with smaller groups (<sarcasm> I'm really good at math and did all the math involving matches/week and group sizes </sarcasm>) might be an idea. If there were 8 matches total per team over 12 weeks, that might help organization on a team level, and take a bit of the burden off of the player and clan leader. It would also allow for the core group of players on each squad to not feel overwhelmed by two months of straight Saturdays (as fun and enjoyable as this league has been). As Brick said, we're one of the teams suffering from fatigue (we're small, 12 players right now, as well as a few long term LOAs right now), and I feel like we're not alone. I love the league and all aspects of it (Best of One, casting, organization - from a player's perspective, the community), but the commitment is getting a bit taxing as the weeks progress (my wife may or may not poison me on any given Saturday at this point :P ).
EDIT: As I re-read this, I realized that 12 weeks may be painfully long for casters, organizers, and referees. Possibly a shorter season might be a better option? Something should be done to augment the schedule a bit. Other than that, no complaints!
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though dialogue stopped a while ago, I'll throw it out that it'd be nice to have a shorter season or a gap in the middle so there would be some chances for the occasional non-standard event on the Saturday slot like Baptism by Spire.
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I'd agree there. It does kind of push out other events given it's length.
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I'd agree there. It does kind of push out other events given it's length.
Gonna be devil's advocate here and say that's what people wanted. Everyone called for a league not just a tournament, and having that take up ~2 months is about as minimal as you could get it with the amount of teams that participated.
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Personally I kind of like the longer season, it gives a nice spread for win/loss records. Shortening the season gives a lot more ties, less head to head, and a higher chance of teams having similar k/d. Just makes it difficult in general to seed the tournament.
Some options might be splitting the Hephaestus over a couple of days, such as Friday and Saturday matches. Same number of matches and stuff, but half the teams play on Friday, and half on Saturday; leaving more room for other events on Saturday.
Then the problem with that is it'll be harder to find a good time on Friday for teams to play. Since players in America have work/school more often on Fridays. Moving the time to later in the evening is often far too late for EU players, despite being a weekend.
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maybe a 2 week break at the midpoint, then?
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The real question comes down to what the community wants from this. The goal, if need be, is for this to be treated as the high level competitive event, as Cogs and Sky League were treated. The event you look to compete in to be crowned the best competitive team in the game. With this in mind, there are 2 distinct features where we made choices that pushed us towards where we are.
Tournament, league, or other? We chose league. This allows teams to continue to play over the length of the event. However, it keeps daily events long throughout, and it increases the length as teams play more matches. Tournament offers faster resolution, but teams eliminated early have nothing to do while it plays out. Other options are possible through creativity possibly. Ideas are welcome.
Size: exclusive or inclusive? We chose to be inclusive. Anyone can participate. This allows dark horse contenders and fresh teams the opportunity to make headway. It also makes the event much larger. With more teams, there needs to be more matches to help really determine where teams fall. Exclusive play would allow for a limited team pool of the best teams, allowing for shorter seasons and higher level play all around, but at the cost of teams that don't do as well.
No matter what else you look at, it really boils down to these 2 factors.
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For example, keeping league play and switching over to exclusive play. The League features 4 top level teams. These teams all play each other once in a best of 3 over the course of 3 weeks. The top 2 teams play each other in a final best of 3 during the 4th week, determining the season winner. After a week off, the next season starts. The top 2 teams from the previous season stay, and the bottom 2 teams are knocked out. They are replaced by the top 2 teams in whatever event was running for everyone else during the previous season.
Using this all but the top 4 teams can participate in whatever event the community puts together on Saturdays. The best 2 teams coming out of this are offered a place in the next season. Take it like the soccer system, where you can move up by playing well and move down by playing poorly. The premier event features only those teams that are hot at the moment, or that can perform exceptionally consistently.
Now your low tier events can be whatever fits inside a 4-5 week window, and if it is shorter than that it gives teams a break.
This helps solve a lot of problems in a lot of areas, but it breaks one of the decisions we made to be inclusive. It is a route we could move to, but it would naturally move away from some of the better rewards these events have had. It would also beg for something like a yearly Sky League tournament to be held.
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Looking at something falling in the "other" category, let's keep the length of the league and make it more accessible to teams. This wouldn't help other events, but it would help individual teams and new teams.
Take the regular season and break it up into 3 separate and distinct periods. These periods last 3 weeks and run in succession. You may sign up for a period up until 1 week before it starts, so a team could join in at the end of the regular season. Teams are broken into divisions of 6 teams each, and you play 5 games over the course of the 3 week period. The top team from each division is advanced into the winner's bracket. All other teams are free to sign back up for the next period or to take a break. At the end of the 3 periods, all teams in the winner's bracket move into a 2-3 week playoffs. While periods are going on, any team in the winner's bracket can request a match to earn a higher seeding in the playoffs. These matches will be custom made between teams that sign up from the winner's bracket, meaning the admins could even make it a CP map, or take 3 teams and create a 3v3 match. This allows winner's bracket teams the opportunity to play and advance while having a sure spot in the playoffs.
This format frees teams from the long commitment and the small window of opportunity to sign up. It keeps winning teams entertained after they secure their spot and provides an opportunity for unique matches not usually seen in competitive. And it still gives a feeling of there being a season event with a dramatic playoff. But it really breaks apart the league concept and turns it into something... else.
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Overall, there are creative solutions, but you have to make concessions to try to balance between a perfect theoretical idea and making something that is enjoyable. Feel free to give ideas on ways to move around problems, or feedback on the couple ideas posted. Those are my personal ideas for a direction we could move, but the first is radical and the second didn't get the most favorable feedback from fellow admins. ;D But that's okay. I'm farming for ideas to see what people enjoy/hate. And somehow I think exclusive play would not go over well. ;)
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Same as always ... Just my thoughts aswell no official statement.
I can totally sign the last sentences from redria.
I would love to improve the issues we had and the problematic facts. But i dont want to turn this to one of the thousands of one-off tourneys we already had.
Yes they are good and allow a big potion of teams to competet whenever they want. But then we lack that major event that puts everything together and allows only the best teams to come out on top. Thats what we lacked during the Sunday Rumble and Saturday Box Social period. We had tournaments going all weekend but all of them were one timers. You played one and that was it. There was no big event that crowned the king.
Thats what i thought Hepheastus should be. And you cant have this when you dont drag it out. A simple elimination tournament will never be able to crown the best teams. No matter if its played on one or several weeks. Thats what a league is good for. It judges much better who is good. That doesnt that certain factors dont influence it but the influence of say one player missing isnt that big.
Ill take the Mad Hatters as an example. They had to forfeit one match and still came out on third place of their division. One unfortunate factor (missing player, lag, mood, day performance) doesnt influence your whole score to hard. It will always have an influence but the influence gets smaller the more matches you have in a league.
And adding a two week break instead of just a one week break introduces the problem of longterm commitment much more.
We will see what we can grab for season 2.
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Match A
1 SIR 5-3
2 SIR 5-1
3 NA
Match B
1 Thralls 5-1
2 Thralls 5-0
3 NA
Match C
1 SIR 5-3
2 HRA 5-2
3 HRA 5-4
Match D
1 Thralls 5-4
2 Ryder 5-2
3 Ryder 5-3
Match E
1 Ryder 5-4
2 HRA 5-3
3 HRA 5-2
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Match A
1 SIR 5-3
2 SIR 5-1
3 NA
Match B
1 Thralls 5-1
2 Thralls 5-0
3 NA
Match C
1 SIR 5-3
2 HRA 5-2
3 HRA 5-4
Match D
1 Thralls 5-4
2 Ryder 5-2
3 Ryder 5-3
Match E
1 Ryder 5-4
2 HRA 5-3
3 HRA 5-2
wrong thread maybe?
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Nah, I just give my thoughts on improvement in complicated code form
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I want to just say thing, I do think the playoff should be changed back into a 2 week affair (OR two days weekend thing if teams can do it), with the quarter and semi finals played out on the first week with the finals being a bo5 played on the final day. It be way more fun to watch for me, I tend to watch playoffs and keep an eye on the leagues.
Also, maybe it be worth keeping in mind (if we get lucky with the game becoming a popular e-sport) running several leagues and playoffs into a world championship, this would solve the EU/US problems. So the HC is designed with being scalable.
I think 30 minutes is a perfect setup for now with bo1 considering the constraints HC has. It's actually shorter than a lot of the current sports out there, I would love to see it expand slightly with more teams completing and if we get more casters, having the season extend a bit with more matches. I can dream..
Having said all that, I really wanted to see a bo5 finals, 2 hours of two of the top team battling it out would be glorious! That's the one thing I'd love to see out of all my suggestions.
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Is the HC League too long, too short, or just right? Why do you feel this way?
It was just fine. Really good format for seasonal league, 2-3 in year will be best to keep teams in tonus
Much of the league uses a best of 1 system. Would a best of 3 system have felt better, or was the best of 1 option a good way to protect your time and the audience's time?
I loved the usage of Bo1, however, I believe that in case of smaller amount of teams (8 or less) Bo3 is possible
The HC League (re?)introduced a separation of casting and administration, but failed (largely due to me) to separate administration and referees. Was the separation good? Would you have liked to see more separation between administration and referees?
I see no difference between motivation of tournament hosts and referees. It will be great, if administration will have abilities to hire more referees, but I see no disaster if hosts need to be referees themselves
Time limit rules came into play multiple times. Were these rules a good way to end the match, both as a player and as a viewer? Is there a different format that you feel might better protect the ability to bring any style to competition?
HC showed that with any playstyle in 2v2 is possible to get kills on limited time. We seen sniper battles finished in 10 minutes, we seen brawling builts, who haven't got kills in given time... I consider calling longer time for a match is a total disrespect to other teams and organisation. Also, there are quite few people who can afford playing more than 6 hours a day, and we can't all be oriented on their capabilities.
Were the set start times a good or bad thing? Did you feel you were left waiting in full lobbies too long waiting for your match to start? Did you enjoy knowing exactly when your match would start? Did it allow you to schedule better and get friends to watch you? Would a rolling start time or a different format work better?
Set start time was a huge impovement. I expierenced waiting for 1,5 hour in crew formation during sky league, not being able to leave, because game could start any time, and that was quite exausting. Fixed starts allow viewers to view streams in chekmate order, which is a great advantage both for streamer and viewers
Did the lobby time limit provide an adequate arena for selecting your ship without opening the match to excessive ship swapping? Did you feel safe to take unusual builds, or would a different system make you feel safer in taking unusual builds?
This is teamwork-based game after all. Build, perfectly trained by crew always wins newly taken one, even if it is a perfect counter. The example of double junker, runned by the Mandarins, illustrated this well enough - they survived and destroyed even under carronade fire. That is why I am convinced, that swapping always punishes the swapper, and plays fewer role in match score
Were the pause time rules fair, and fairly enforced? Were you ever concerned that server problems or player disconnects would ruin a match for your team?
I believe, that pauses were helpful to avoid several connection problems. Unfortunately, they can't protect from all the disconnects. And yes, server issues influenced the team's performances a lot.
Were the substitution rules sufficiently flexible to allow you to make all needed substitutions? Did you ever feel the substitution rules were too lax, allowing a player or team to abuse them?
Substitution rules were greately liberal. I remember how much drama strict subbing rules called in Sky League. Unfortunately, we currently have a situation where one captain was able to play for three different teams, which atually mixed up the team's ratings a bit.
I am absolutely agreed with Frogger, who mentioned that team captains must be locked to their teams. The person in captain slot does greater difference to team's performance, rather than crew substitute. That is why a person, piloting for one team, must not be able to pilot for another.
Were there any rules you felt strongly for or against? Something you felt harmed the integrity of the match or League?
The ranking, based on kills, needs improvement. Maybe it needs to be balanced with kill/death ratio or other ways to protect teams from being unfairly underscored
Do you feel that the map pool provided sufficient variety, and that the maps each added something beneficial to the map pool? Was there a map that detracted from the quality of the League that you felt should have been removed?
I have very strong pesonal dislike of "Battle in the Dunes" map. It's removal needs to be discussed
Would you be intrigued by a restructuring of the regular season to allow more fluid participation, or would you prefer a second season to maintain a more strict adherence to current structuring?
I loved the current structure of league, and I would prefer to keep it
Would you be interested in playing more than one match per day (Bo1) even if your matches were not scheduled consecutively?
Absolutely no! only if my match time will be scheduled in advance, so I can plan my evening
Would you be interested in taking an axe to the pause rules and removing official pauses?
No chance, current pause rules protect players, not abuse them
I totally agree with AbbyTheRat that forming divisions considering the teams' region will give a great advance both to american and european parts of community. The overlap between timezones is narrow, but large enough to put cross-divisional matches there
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Bare in mind, I say the future seasons should bare in this mind and allow to build into regions, however right now, I do not know we have enough team to really create exciting leagues battles, so right now we want to merge the leagues.
I repeat, it's something that future HC Seasons should build into their seasons so that if we ever get lucky with being a big e-sport, it won't be a huge complication to do because it was built that way in mind.. I really like the current system and like it to stay.
Idea moment - HC could do with a website to track this, more information in one place instead of spread out across the post. Statistic would be easier to track cause the website would design to track it.
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The following junk of words is not greatly related to improvement of all the tournament rules and neither is it meant to attack anyone's opinion, but rather it is an opinion on why this:
Team captains must be locked to their teams.
might not be the best idea for improvement. I hope the following opinion (/story telling/philosophical rubbish) helps tune the sub rules in a less strict way and thus improve them:
Unfortunately, we currently have a situation where one captain was able to play for three different teams, which atually mixed up the team's ratings a bit.
Oops.
But how unfortunate is it really? A clan with an active playerbase of 8 or less and therefore needs a constant basis of subs (or a few permanent crewmembers that are not even part of the clan) can't have everybody in their team ready to pilot. And neither can a team that can only get their full team together just barely long enough for each crewmember to practise their roles in their team, before the next competitive match. The Mad Hatters could pull it off after they got their team back together, could the SIRs? Even us Rydr had trouble once we had to get a second sub-pilot going.
Can you blame a team that it has not prepared for such unfortunate circumstances? Even though not every clan/team can be ready for this, you probably could. Would it be fair to "punish" them by restricting their performance and flexiblity? I say, this particular topic needs to be discussed thoroughly by the organizers of their tournaments.
I jumped in for TAW and in some people's eyes it was one of their better performances. We still lost 5-2, even with a full Rydr crew which might or might not have had as big of an impact as me. I jumped in for SIR, that time without any other Rydr to give me company and SIR won the silver play-offs. When I think about this, I wonder just how much of an impact I really made and it could be very well, that I alone had not made that much more impact than the unfortunate crewmember I was subbing for.
What would the difference have been if the teams I subbed for had their full crew? Would TAW have won against Holy? Would the SIRs have performed worse if they had their actual pilots instead of a one-time sub from outside their team? Would the Rydr actually have lost the golden play-offs or even make it in there if Hillerton and Lueosi could have been flying together for the entire tournament? Strictly speaking, I was not even part of the Rydr's official team.
Do you want people to sign up their entire clan, just to be sure they have enough pilot subs?
The person in captain slot does greater difference to team's performance, rather than crew substitute.
I think I was only as good as the team I was subbing for. SIR had that much more experience than TAW and thus the scores were that much better. However, that is subjective and very likely to be inaccurate and just a coincidence how everything worked out.
I am not against a rule where a pilot can't just fly for every team as he likes, but if the rules are too strict it could lead to unfortunate results, maybe even to that extent that it wastes peoples time (one could say though that it is just a game and wasting time is part of it).
I would fly or even gun/engineer for every team if I can help them to not surrender in advance. Such an event is just unfortunate and I wouldn't want to see any team succumb to this in an over-a-month long tournament. Why would anyone?
Not to mention, if the surrender happens shortly before the match, the opposing team has wasted its time practising when it could have relaxed instead.
I apologize if this was too badly structered.
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Daniel, changing substitute rules is a field for a separate tread. I feel like you probably should create one, if you have so much to say about this.
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Daniel, changing substitute rules is a field for a separate tread. I feel like you probably should create one, if you have so much to say about this.
Actually it's perfectly fine to discuss here. This thread is for feedback, and he gave good feedback. :)
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Is the HC League too long, too short, or just right? Why do you feel this way?
While the Hephaestus was quite lengthy (10 weeks in total I believe) I feel it should be that long. The Hephaestus was supposed to be a competitive league, not week long tournament.
Much of the league uses a best of 1 system. Would a best of 3 system have felt better, or was the best of 1 option a good way to protect your time and the audience's time?
Bo1 matches for the Regular Season and the Silver Playoffs were perfect for keeping things short, interesting, and on schedule. There's far too much that can happen in a Bo3 to keep it nicely planned out, and when there's a whole bunch of other matches waiting to be played, Bo3 for the Regular Season (and possibly the Silver Playoffs) just takes too long.
The HC League (re?)introduced a separation of casting and administration, but failed (largely due to me) to separate administration and referees. Was the separation good? Would you have liked to see more separation between administration and referees?
The separation between casting and administration was fine, as well as the "combination" of administration and referees. Far too often during the matches I saw people asking questions about the rules. Who better to answer them definitively than the people who wrote them?
Time limit rules came into play multiple times. Were these rules a good way to end the match, both as a player and as a viewer? Is there a different format that you feel might better protect the ability to bring any style to competition?
Its inevitable that if given enough time a match will end, one way or another. However, having a match that lasts 3 hours is tiresome to watch, just as tiresome as it is to play. The cut and dry time limit rules were great for keeping the entire Hephaestus rolling smoothly. 30 minutes is plenty of time for a match to be played and ended without getting too dragged out.
Were the set start times a good or bad thing? Did you feel you were left waiting in full lobbies too long waiting for your match to start? Did you enjoy knowing exactly when your match would start? Did it allow you to schedule better and get friends to watch you? Would a rolling start time or a different format work better?
Static start times works much, much better than a "lose" scheduling would. There's no wondering when you're going to play, you already know.
Did the lobby time limit provide an adequate arena for selecting your ship without opening the match to excessive ship swapping? Did you feel safe to take unusual builds, or would a different system make you feel safer in taking unusual builds?
Teams usually had a game plan before matches anyways, so I never saw choosing your ship loadout in lobby as too much of an issues. The shorter time-frame kept teams for doing an endless rotation of loadout swaps and kept it to forcing teams to play with something that they felt comfortable enough to fly.
Were the pause time rules fair, and fairly enforced? Were you ever concerned that server problems or player disconnects would ruin a match for your team?
I believe the pause time rules were fair in their design. As for fairly enforced, there are instances where I might disagree. There's always a concern that a player will disconnect and ruin the match (it happened to a lot of teams during the season, as well as my team during the finals unfortunately). Making the pause rules a bitter necessity.
Were the substitution rules sufficiently flexible to allow you to make all needed substitutions? Did you ever feel the substitution rules were too lax, allowing a player or team to abuse them?
Several things for substitutions: The rules for substitutions were lax enough to allow for a last minute substitution, which is a good thing. However, I would also like to add the idea of a mid-match substitution pause to be specifically longer than a normal pause to allow enough time for the in-game timers to run out and allow time for the player to join the game. Substitutions in general however I feel should be more tightly controlled. If Hephaestus is truly a league, then the competing clans are in every sense of the word; teams. Competitive teams don't lend one another players (American Football Example: If the Green Bay Packers' Quarterback was out on an injury, the New England Patriots wouldn't lend them Tom Brady on their bye-week. European Football Example: If Manchester United was down a goalie, Real Madrid wouldn't lend them their's if they weren't playing that week). Competing teams should list their players, their regular crews, as well as people they think might need to play for them as a sub sometime in the future. If a team does need a last minute substitute, they should be drafted from people not competing at all.
Were there any rules you felt strongly for or against? Something you felt harmed the integrity of the match or League?
I had no problem with any of the rules, except the aforementioned substitution rule, and maybe some more strict regulation on using the text chat mid-game is needed, so a referee's words aren't drowned out in all of the random blabber.
Do you feel that the map pool provided sufficient variety, and that the maps each added something beneficial to the map pool? Was there a map that detracted from the quality of the League that you felt should have been removed?
I had no problem with the map pool. While I understand the majority of people don't like Battle on the Dunes, it is 2v2 Deathmatch, and one that forces teams to play in a different style, due to its terrain. What sucks is how people are forced to play on the map, but assuming you keep the 30 minute time limit rule, then this map should continue to stay in the map pool.
Would you be intrigued by a restructuring of the regular season to allow more fluid participation, or would you prefer a second season to maintain a more strict adherence to current structuring?
As I said earlier, if this is supposed to be a league, then the more strict and organized, the better. Forcing teams to sign up by a specific date makes scheduling things far down the road much, much earlier. And for the teams themselves, they already know who they're going to be playing for the entire regular season (which is a good thing). Allowing teams to come in during the middle of the regular season also encourages teams to drop out entirely during the regular season, giving it more an atmosphere of the Sunday Community Skirmish, which isn't a good thing for a competitively league to have.
Would you be interested in playing more than one match per day (Bo1) even if your matches were not scheduled consecutively?
I liked the league's current set up, and don't really see a need to change it from how it currently is.
Would you be interested in taking an axe to the pause rules and removing official pauses?
No. Competitive gaming over the internet has far too many variables to not have some sort of pause rules in affect. Between disconnects, lagging out, restarts, and a whole other plethora of things that can go wrong, the pause rules are necessary.
Ending Note: I thought the Hephaestus was very well thought out, planned, and excited. There's very little criticism I personally have for the Hephaestus Challenge. It was a great experience, lots of fun, and I can't wait for next season! :)
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I think the concern here about substitutions isn't necessarily the performance of the teams, but the fact that it is meant to be a clan vs clan league.
Essentially you start turning every game into an "all-stars" type of game instead of clan vs clan.
To preserve that, I think maybe we should have a more strict policy on the amount of substitutions?
For example: If you fly (or crew) for your clan's official team for the tournament, you may only substitute for one additional team in your division. You may sub for up to 2 teams out of your division. If you are not an official member of your clan's team, you may sub for 1 additional team in each division (2 for your division, 3 for out of division). You may sub an unlimited number of times for your own clan's matches, but doing so counts as one of your teams.
Furthermore, perhaps each clan only has a certain "pool" of replacement points for each season. We want to play clan vs clan, not friends vs friends (I get that this is often the case, but I think at least in this league, the concept of a clan is important). You get 2 replacement points per game (cumulative over the season, so you can save up replacements), capping out at 5. Pilots cost 2 points, engie/gunner replacements cost 1 point.
This way you can almost always pad your team somewhat, but not so much that an entire ship is subbed in (unless you save your points, and only up to 1 entire ship). These numbers could be tweaked.
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I just had an idea, a lot of clan would love to see who's 3rd and 4th, there should be one last match to determine who's take third place!
Using the last playoff as an example, Thralls vs SIR for third and fourth place. Sometimes these matches are as fun to watch as the finals.
Also could be fun is seeing who's 5th and 6th! Could do this if the finals bo5/bo3 is not enough to fill a second week. (I think only the finals need to be bo5.
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I think placement matches are only worth it if there are prizes to go along with spots.